Brandmerry Blog Archives
What To Do When You Don't Hit Your Business Goals
It happens to all of us, probably more than anyone would like to admit. Yep, I'm talking about not hitting your business goals and projections. And rather than feeling defeated or as if something is wrong with you, I want to share my greatest lessons and discoveries when things don't go as planned.
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
I hope that this title really caught your attention.
I know it did on Instagram when I shared that I didn't hit my goals in business. And I was really hesitant to share that for obvious reasons, but the response that I got really reminded me how important it is to share this side of being a business owner.
Because it can always feel like everyone around you is fucking nailing it and you're over here like, "What? What did I do wrong? Why am I different?"
But the reality is nobody's nailing it.
We all have these moments where we don't necessarily hit our goals. I'm five years into running this business, which is kind of nuts to think about. There have been numerous times that I haven't hit my goals, but I've always made progress and moved forward even when I didn't hit my goals.
So, when I posted that Instagram post, it made me kind of think, "What would I share with entrepreneurs specifically about NOT hitting your goals?"
And then as fate would play out, I had a client who hosted their very first challenge and it didn't go as they had planned. We had a whole conversation about, "What does that mean? What could we have done? What do we learn from this?" And I was like, "Oh my God, I just need to share this on the damn podcast."
So that's how we got here today.
BUSINESS EXPECTATIONS
I think that there is a very thin, beautiful, kind of wiggly line between goals and expectations. I think we get the two confused quite often.
I'm a big fan of setting goals, many of you know this. It is like in every program that I'm in if you work with me one-on-one, I'm always asking you, "What are your goals?" because it's really important to reverse engineer. I think one of the best strategies that we can learn as business owners is to reverse engineer.
Thinking about where we want to go and the steps we need to take to get from point A to point B.
It breaks down the whole planning process and it makes it actually quite simple and less overwhelming.
Goals are measurable. We know this. We've learned this in school. You can actually look at a goal and say, "Yes, I'm 20% there. I'm 50% there. I've already surpassed that."
Expectations are very different. And I've found that expectations tend to be very emotional, where goals are achievable and able to analyze when we remove the emotion.
There comes a point where you have to remove the emotion and say, "What is the data telling me?"
But that doesn't change the fact that we go into a launch or putting our business out there or whatever without expectations, without the emotion behind it and why it’s important that we are paying attention to why we're setting the goal.
WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS GOAL?
The first thing you want to identify is...What is the goal?
Make sure that it's measurable; typically some sort of a number.
Then, get clear on why you have that specific goal. Ask yourself, “Why is this goal important to me? Why am I going for this goal?"
And then, and this is the hard part, strip away all the BS around what you should be doing.
I'll give you the example that I posted on Instagram. I posted on Instagram at the beginning of June that I didn't hit my goal for my Academy launch.
Now, Brandmerry Academy is a marketing membership that I host along with the Brandmerry support team where we support entrepreneurs in marketing their business without relying on social media.
I have launched the Academy three times since the doors opened. I basically put the whole thing out into the world at the beginning of 2020. As I was gearing up for this launch, I was thinking about our launch in January 2021. It was epic. It was so good. There were a lot of different reasons for that.
One of which is that I had another program that was ending, the support was ending, so a lot of those members went into the Academy. And then we brought in a lot of new members. We did the same in terms of numbers this launch as well, bringing in the same percentage of new members, but I didn't have an existing program ending, so we didn't have that kind of rollover.
I wasn't planning on that though. I wasn't planning for that. But I was planning for a giant launch.
When I say giant, like big, scary to me, not necessarily to someone else. Maybe to you listening, it might be absolutely terrifying if you've never launched anything before. But, I was essentially going for a $50,000 launch, which is not something that I have done to date.
And I felt really good about it. I felt really confident in it. Obviously, there are some scary feelings, exciting feelings as well if you're jumping up that high, which we were, almost doubling what had been done previously without spending more on ads.
So, when I didn't hit my goal, there was something that I think we all go through. There was number one, "Okay, what happened? What did I do wrong?" I think that we can all be honest with ourselves here and say that that's kind of where our mind goes right in the beginning.
But I've done this enough to know that even if you don't hit the goal, it doesn't mean that it was a complete freaking flop or a failure. That’s why it’s so important to remove the emotion because it also doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.
WHAT DOES A FLOP TELL US?
So what does it tell us and what do we do when we don't hit those goals?
In order for anything that I'm going to share with you to work, you have to have a measurable goal. I know I've said that 16 times already. You have to have a measurable goal, or none of this is going to work.
You'll find that you aren't hitting your goals, but you can't assess why that happened.
You've got to set the goal and stick to it and stay the course. You have to have a very, very clear, measurable, specific goal and make sure that goal feels good to you.
I believe in challenging ourselves. And I shared this in that Instagram post that I could've very easily just wanted to replicate what we had done in January. That would have been fine. And that's what ended up happening.
So when we set out and challenge ourselves and it doesn’t go as planned...
It does not mean that there's anything wrong with you.
It does not mean that you are a failure or that you failed in that situation.
It does not mean that you can't do it later.
It does not mean that you will not be successful.
When we don't hit our goals, we get so freaking down on ourselves and hard on ourselves that we slip into the mindset that we’re never going to be successful!
What a detrimental feeling as a CEO.
LOOKING AT THE DATA
When I finally started looking at the data and what the data was actually telling me, as I mentioned before, allowed me to remove the emotions.
Because no matter what happened, at the end of it all you grew from that experience. If you challenged yourself with a new scary number or you set a goal that you had never achieved before, you challenged yourself. You grew.
If you plan to launch something, let's say you wanted to host a webinar or something, you grew your community through your efforts.
Maybe you just got to practice talking about your offer over and over and over again so now you feel incredibly confident.
Maybe you wrote a bunch of emails and now you get to repurpose those emails later on for your next launch.
You can have a base, you can tweak it and you can move forward. That's what all this is about.
When we don't hit our goals, we move on to this mindset of defeat.
That's not serving us.
That's not serving our businesses.
That's not serving us as the CEO.
It's not serving us as people.
We have to get into the habit of removing our worthiness from the success of our business. Whether your business succeeds or doesn't succeed, doesn't change the fact that you are worthy.
That's why I'm in love with looking at the data when we don't hit our goals.
Because we need to be invested in what we're doing, but we cannot tie the success of what we're doing to our worthiness as human beings.
I see this happen a lot with business owners, especially newer business owners, in their first year or two years of running a business, where they're constantly going through this emotional roller coaster if they don't achieve exactly what they set out to do.
So, when I was talking to my client about the particular challenge that she hosted; the first one ever, very small email list, I started to say, "Okay, let's look at the data."
WHAT DATA TO LOOK AT
Let's say your goal is to get 100 people signed up for your webinar and you got 50 people on.
What you want to do is look at first is dedicated time.
How often were you promoting the signup?
If you didn't hit your sign-up goal, then it will come down to two things.
Thing number one, were you actively promoting?
Were you putting it out there enough for people to actually sign up?
We know we have to talk about things multiple times. And sometimes people have to hear things seven times in order to take action, even on something that is free.
With the data you can sit there and assess and say with clarity, "I probably could have posted this a little bit more. I really only did it twice a week," so on and so forth.
Number two area for analysis is your messaging.
If you feel like you promoted it consistently across all platforms; you were talking about it quite often, you were just doing the damn thing, but sign-ups were lacking, then you can start to look at your messaging.
Was my messaging clear?
Could I have created a better title for this?
Is it a timing thing?
If you have a landing page for people to sign up on, you can see how many people landed on the sign-up page (or landing page) and how many people signed up. Maybe your conversion rate was 20%, then we know that needs to be higher and we can adjust your messaging.
If you got great traffic but few sign-ups, we know it’s a messaging issue on the sign-up page.
Do you see how powerful this data is for moving forward?
Then the next thing we look at is engagement.
If you're hosting a webinar, it's important to know that in your mind you might have this expectation that 100% of the people who sign up are going to attend your webinar (there are those sneaky expectations again).
But data shows that that's not true. In fact, a solid goal is 50%. Of the people who sign up, we want a minimum of 50% of those people to attend the webinar.
That is a marker for us. So if you're going in with this crazy expectation that it's supposed to be 100%, you're already setting yourself up.
Now that doesn't mean you can't have more than that, but that is what you want to shoot for, for your minimum.
So, you can assess the situation and say, "Oh, hey, 50% actually did show up. Maybe it wasn't necessarily the number of people that we imagined on a webinar or on a live video, but based on our sign-ups, we hit the 50% mark."
So if you hit the engagement rate, but 50% equaled a low number, then we know we need more people to sign up and can circle back to number one.
If you didn't hit the engagement marker, then you get to look at your numbers and say, "Well, were people opening the emails where I was reminding them about it, did people know where to go? Was I doing a good job with the CTA on the video? Was I doing a good job of keeping people engaged on the webinar?"
That's the thing that I love about marketing.
MY LAUNCH ANALYSIS: CASE STUDY
Your data is there, you just need to analyze it.
Look at your data through a lens of no emotion. It's a non-emotional lens if you will.
Just read the data and see what the numbers are telling you. It's going to improve your marketing.
For the launch that I had done for the Academy, I started to look at the information. Sometimes when I’m launching, I'll do a webinar, or sometimes I will do a challenge. With each of my programs, I've fluctuated between the two because I really want to find what works best.
So this most recent launch we did a four-day challenge. And when we were looking at the numbers and comparing to the previous one, we noticed that sign-ups and engagement were lower for the challenge.
What that tells me, by looking at the data, is that my audience is busy and they have a really hard time committing to showing up consistently over the course of four or five days. But by inviting them to a single workshop or session that they can just block off an hour and a half on their calendar, it's much easier.
We know this because when we host one-day workshops for The Academy launch, the sign-up and show-up rate is higher.
We also then started to dissect the emails. On the back end of this challenge, I opened the doors to The Academy Now, one of the things that we've been playing with from time to time has been creating shorter launches. When I first started my business, I would launch for two to three weeks.
The first time I launched Roadmap to Freedom I launched for an entire month. I was so tired. But I was just starting so I didn't have a huge community and I wanted to get on the phone with as many people as possible and I was testing everything.
As we've launched more and more, we've played with shortening that time span.
But this launch was still a little long. We realized when people were actually signing up. And most of the people sign up on the webinar or the challenge and then at the very end. So we can shorten that quite a bit and that's some data that we can take moving forward. We felt like this one was just a little bit long and drawn out.
One of the things that showed us this information, was looking at the open rates and looking at the click-through rates and how they steadily declined and then peaked.
That really kind of confirmed for us over here at Brandmerry that we wanted to shorten our launches. And that's a strategy that we're going to use moving forward. It also saves me time and energy as well.
The final thing that I always look at for a launch specifically if not hitting my goals is the messaging.
That's that last piece. "Were people opening my emails?"
We keep a spreadsheet where we input all that data from ConvertKit, which is the platform that we use for email marketing. And then we can say with clarity which emails had better open rates and click-through rates.
The open rate data telling us which subject lines worked and the click-through rate telling us more about the body of the email.
This is a normal conversation when we’re assessing the date, "Wow, this email had a huge open rate. Great. We'll probably keep that subject line when we launch again. This one did not have a great open rate. We need to change that subject line. This had a great click-through rate. Fantastic. The body of the email, the email itself is awesome. We don't need to mess with that."
And that allows us to look at the information and repurpose pieces that worked for the next launch - we don’t need to recreate the wheel.
Do you see how powerful it is when we take time to assess our goals?
CONCLUSION
The assessment stage is the most important stage for moving forward.
How do you know what to improve upon?
How do you know what to change?
How do you know what to keep constant?
...if you don't take the time to look at what actually happened?
Remove your worth and your emotion from the assessment stage while you look at the data.
After you’ve assessed the data you can then ask yourself, “How do I feel?”
What do these feelings tell me about the work?
Do I enjoy what I’m doing?
How do I feel about the process?
You will become a better business owner if you let your data drive your decisions, and then swoop in at the end and say, "How do I feel about this? How do I feel about the data? Do I want to give it another go and switch it up and see what happens? Do I just say, 'Nope, data shows that this isn't working? I fucking hate it. Let's just do something different?"
You get to make those decisions and I think it empowers us!
It gives us back the power as the CEO to make those decisions. And that's incredibly important.
Be grateful for what did happen.
Celebrate what did happen.
Don't get so obsessed with what didn't work out that you forget to celebrate what did.
That's how you are going to move your business forward.
That's what I did after this launch. I celebrated the amazing new members inside of The Academy. I also celebrated what I learned as a business owner.
Be open to adapting, and celebrate no matter what.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
How to Build Your Personal Brand
So you've recognized that building a personal brand is important, but how do you really do it. Today on the blog, I'm sharing the exact steps to follow to build a strong personal brand in business.
How to Build Your Personal Brand
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
Today’s episode is all about personal branding.
As a Personal Branding Consultant and Marketing Strategist, it's one of my favorite topics and something I support my clients with daily. I have spent the last five years teaching entrepreneurs how to personally brand themselves online so that they can build scalable businesses.
The information that I'm sharing with you today isn't just based on my experience. It's based on my clients, which includes hundreds who have gone through my program, You! Branded, or worked with me as a 1:1 VIP client.
What I’m teaching you today will shift the way you think about branding forever and fill in some of the gaps in your personal brand as well.
WHAT IS PERSONAL BRANDING
In this context, I am talking about personal branding as it applies to business owners. So, you're looking to receive money and funds for your products or your services online.
With this in mind, how does personal branding impact that?
Personal branding is based on the experience that you are creating for your ideal customer, with you being the person behind the brand.
Whether you sell a product or a service, personal branding can help you create more connections with your audience. We've also found that personal branding helps with client retention.
When a customer shares a connection with a brand, connects with shared values, is on board with their mission, feels taken care of, is connected to their story, we know that client retention improves. This is why personal branding is so important no matter what you sell online.
At the end of the day, if you're not leading the charge with your personal brand, if you aren't choosing what messages are being shared and what is being said, other people will create the narrative for you.
We don't really want that.
So, it is important that as a business owner you are focused on the person, or the people if there's more than one, behind the brand, and sharing that through the art of personal branding.
When we watch videos or read most blogs on personal branding, they’re typically focused on social media only. I want you to think of that as an avenue for sharing your personal brand, but keep in mind you can also share your personal brand through video, blogging, or email marketing.
There are a lot of different ways to showcase your personal brand online.
For our purpose I want to dive deeper into what personal branding is made up of, not just how you share your personal brand.
How do you actually figure out what your personal brand is, so you can use those marketing avenues to attract your ideal customers, promote your products and services, and build a deeper connection?
To figure out what our personal brand is, we've got to start at the very, very first step, which is understanding who you are.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP 1: UNDERSTANDING WHO YOU ARE
When it comes to figuring out who you are, the person behind the brand, it's important to start thinking about your story.
Now, story work is something that I specialize in, over here at Brandmerry. No matter if you work with me on branding or marketing, we're always focused on the art of storytelling.
I talked about storytelling in this video right here. If you want to check it out, that is going to be really helpful for you in understanding why story is so important.
But some of the things that you want to identify in the beginning is:
Who the heck are you (or the people behind the brand)?
What has ultimately led you to create this product or this service?
Why do you want to solve this problem for your ideal customer?
We know that to be successful as a business owner, we need to solve a problem.
If there's no problem, people won't pay for a result. They won't pay for a solution.
So, you want to get clear on why you chose to do that? What has ultimately led you here?
One of the elements that I teach inside of Module One of my program You! Branded is focusing on the three transitions. What are three pivotal moments in your life that have led you to this moment today? It’s also something I share in this recent podcast episode here.
This is also incredibly helpful in writing your brand's story, which is often one of the things that we do when we are first launching our business out into the world. Also, at this phase, you want to pay attention to identifying your brand values and your brand mission.
If you need additional help with this, episode one and four on the Brandmerry Podcast talks about both of these pieces, so you can dive into the logistics on each of those over on iTunes or Spotify.
The goal at this stage is to be super clear on the person/people behind the brand, otherwise, it's going to be really hard to communicate who the person behind the brand is, which is the art of personal branding in a nutshell.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP #2: WHO IS YOUR IDEAL CUSTOMER
The second thing that you want to do is get super clear on who you want to attract to your brand.
There are two sides to branding. There's you, the personal brand. The stories that you're ultimately going to share.
Then we also have to understand who the brand is designed for because it's not for you (you can’t buy your own services and products and keep your business afloat). You are the person behind the brand, the person building the connection. But who are you wanting to attract?
This is where understanding who your ideal customer is is incredibly important.
You need to not only get very specific on who your product and your service are ultimately for, but also get down to the nitty-gritty details around who they are.
This is going to help you tremendously as you start to show up on social media, as you start to enhance your email marketing, and as you venture into blogging or creating video.
Who are these pieces of content for? This is going to make the entire process of showing up and marketing your business so much easier.
It's also going to play a role in the types of stories that you share online and the types of photos that you create because you're doing it to attract an ideal customer. You want to make sure that you take the time to identify who that person is.
Here are two little things, and three questions, that I want to share with you on ideal client work.
IDEAL CLIENT WORK: TIP #1
Get super clear on specifically who this person is. This is where some of those demographic pieces come into play. I'm not going to tell you that you can only work with women, or you can only work with men, or you can only work with business owners.
But start to think about those demographics that they identify with most, because that's really going to help you when you are writing copy, creating messaging, and choosing those visual pieces for your brand.
IDEAL CLIENT WORK: TIP #2
The second thing that you want to be able to answer are these three questions:
Where are they at currently?
What are their struggles?
And what is standing in their way?
This is kind of like a two-for-one. Struggles and obstacles.
If someone has a problem, they can clearly tell you, "This is my problem. This is what I'm currently experiencing in my day-to-day life. This is what I'm trying to move away from."
But if they haven't moved away from that yet, what is standing in their way? That can be where you really get clear on the obstacles.
The last piece is where do they ultimately want to go? If you solve their problems if they have a solution, what will that allow them to do?
Now again, I want to be super clear, this plays a role whether you have a product or a service. I actually teach a little secret sauce to ideal client work in my free class, Build a Better Brand Method. Visit betterbrandmethod.com to sign up for free.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP 3: UNDERSTANDING WHO YOU ARE
The third step in the personal branding process is your messaging.
Let's just recap to see how this fits in.
We know who you are, right? You are the person behind the brand. You're the one that's ultimately showing up on these platforms, sharing your expertise, sharing your knowledge.
We understand who you're speaking to and who you want to attract. That's your ideal customer.
Now how do we do this in a very consistent and fluid way? That is where messaging comes into play.
I teach a strategy called Core Brand Messages, which you can watch in this video right here, where I recommend that my clients get super clear on their brand messages for their brand as a whole, not about a specific product.
In fact, I think a lot of entrepreneurs limit themselves because they brand a specific product or a service rather than focusing on the overall personal branding from the beginning.
This looks like identifying some of the obstacles your audience is facing, sharing the struggles that you fix or solve, sharing the desires of your ideal customer and how you, and your brand, ultimately get them from struggle to desire using your techniques.
This is where creating those messages right from the start can really help with consistency in showing up on social media and in the content that you're creating on the different pages on your website.
When it comes to messaging you want to make sure that you're incredibly focused on consistency.
We know that if someone, a consumer, has a break in consistency, they have a break in trust.
So, it's important that if you're showing up on Instagram, and you're showing up on Pinterest, and you have your website (what platforms you ultimately choose), that you are really consistent with your messaging, with the aesthetics, with all those pieces on every single platform.
Don’t break trust with your audience, it's an incredibly bad thing to do as a business owner because we know that people buy based on trust.
Zig Ziglar once said, "If someone likes you, they'll listen to you. If they trust you, they'll do business with you." So, don't break that trust.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP #4: EMOTIONAL BRANDING
Tip number four is my specialty and it is called emotional branding.
Sometimes when we're thinking about showing up online, we get super logistical. We're always thinking about what we offer and why it’s helpful. And while those are VERY important pieces of information to identify, we know that people make purchase decisions based on an emotional connection.
So, emotional branding is incredibly powerful, and it's the focus of Module Six inside of my course You! Branded. We know that when you're super clear on how you ultimately want your ideal customer to feel, then you can create messaging, and you can create the aesthetics, and the visual components and the overall experience to make them feel that way.
I created a video for you right here. It's one of my most popular videos, all about emotional branding.
When thinking about your personal brand make sure that you focus on building a connection because that is what personal branding truly is about. It's about sharing these stories and creating an experience for your audience so that they purchase from the brand and stay loyal to the brand for years to come.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP 5: BUILD A COMMUNITY
Tip number five is all about your ideal customer yet again.
I know we initially think about personal branding as just the person behind the brand, but I hope you realize that that's a small portion of it. To improve your personal brand online, you want to get in front of the right people.
So, this step is all about making sure that you're consistently increasing brand awareness and attracting your ideal customer.
One of the best things that you can do when creating your business is building a community around your brand. This is also going to play a huge role as you expand your brand down the line, maybe offering live events, a podcast, or releasing a book.
My favorite way to build community is through email marketing. Making sure that you are growing your email list so you have a way to stay in contact with your brand community members, to share stories with them, to share educational content, to share knowledge, to share your products and your offers.
Not only is having this online community really going to help with the evolution of your brand, but it's also going to help you make money.
So, as a business owner, it's important that if someone is intrigued by what you're saying, that they are interested in your products and your services, that you get them into your inner circle, that you capture their name and their email address so you can continue to nurture that relationship.
You can read more about growing your email list in this blog.
PERSONAL BRANDING STEP 6: CUSTOMER SERVICE
The last tip that I have for you is all about that connection piece. It's what we talked about in the very beginning. Personal branding really is about the experience. It's about building a connection with your audience. It's about sustainability and longevity.
So, my last tip for you is to take care of your customers. Take care of your clients.
We put too much emphasis on getting people in the door, getting people on our email list. But I challenge you to put the same amount of emphasis, if not more, on taking care of the customers and clients once they're in the door.
This is what is going to lead to your recurring clients, to your referrals, to your word-of-mouth. Some of the most powerful pieces in building a strong personal brand online.
I am really incredibly proud of my client retention rate because I make it a goal to make my clients a top priority.
These are the people who have invested in your products and services. Show up for them, take care of them, and they can be the best advocates for your personal brand.
This looks like making sure you have a clear client onboarding system so they feel taken care of from the moment that they invest. It can look like making sure that you're checking in with them, that you have ways for them to provide feedback, and you're honoring that feedback as well.
One of the things that we have done inside of my course, You! Branded, is to receive feedback from clients on why they purchased, and feedback on obstacles that they've run into as they've gone through the course, or if they would have liked something changed.
We take that feedback to heart and we improve the program for all.
At this point, it's not a guessing game anymore. People will ultimately tell you how you can care for them the best. And if you listen to that, I promise you that they will be the best advocates for your personal brand.
CONCLUSION
I hope that these six steps to improve your personal brand were really helpful for you.
If you want to dive into personal branding and building a better brand, I invite you to watch my free class, the Build a Better Brand Method.
You can check it out with the link below, or go to betterbrandmethod.com to sign up for this on-demand class.
You're going to learn my six-part framework for building a better brand. I talk a little bit more about building those core brand messages, your ideal customer, and the power of story.
You also will have a chance to join us inside of my course You! Branded when you are ready to join us. This course will completely give you everything that you need to build a strong personal brand online.
And, if you want to read a bit more on the blog about personal branding, check out my Personal Branding Guide here.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
Lessons in Marketing: Resiliency Pays Off
Marketing can feel like a lot of work and to be honest a lot of entrepreneurs throw in the towel on their strategies too early. Today on the blog, I'm sharing why resiliency in marketing pays off and my top marketing lessons.
Lessons in Marketing: Resiliency Pays Off
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
When it comes to marketing, you've got to be in it for the long game.
Despite what you might see posted on Facebook Ads, the reality is most people aren’t making $10k in 10 days in the beginning. It takes longevity and dedication, something I’m here for, in order to create sustainable growth as a business owner.
Wouldn’t you rather have consistent $10k months than one week with $10k? Not that you have to choose, you can have both, but from what I’ve seen many individuals create one-hit-wonder marketing strategies that aren’t sustainable.
Resiliency matters as a marketer and if you don't have this resiliency, if you're not really paying attention to the data, to the details, you're going to struggle in marketing your business.
So, in today’s post, I’m sharing.
MARKETING LESSON #1: HAVE MEASURABLE GOALS
I don't know if you have noticed this, but sometimes you plan things, you put in a lot of energy, a lot of time, and you write all the emails, you do all of the things, you put in all the strategy, and then you're like, okay, something seems to be wrong; something's not working.
We're going to talk about how to actually identify what's not working in just a minute, but this is going to happen in business.
I think it's really easy when we're looking at the way specific marketers are talking about their products and services, and think it will automatically work for me and my business. We know this is not true.
So much of a strategy working depends on your audience and who you ultimately want to attract to your brand and your business. But when we go into marketing with this idea, or with this expectation that this is going to work exactly how we have it mapped out, we're really setting ourselves up for a lot of failures.
There's a difference between these crazy expectations and having clear, measurable goals.
As a marketer, it's really important that you have these clear, measurable goals that say, okay, in 30 days let's see where we're at.
If we haven't noticed a 2% or 3% or 4% improvement, then let's talk about some changes that we could make. Let's watch it again another 30 days and see.
Then after that, maybe we have to decide that this isn't right for us.
Or maybe we have to decide to implement something else into our strategy.
That's essentially what I'm talking about when I'm talking about this resiliency in marketing.
You've got to be in it for the long game.
This is the thing about marketing, my friends. It is a long game. But so is being a CEO and a business owner. You don't want a business for two months and then you're like, "I'm done with that."
You put a lot of time and energy into making that happen. So, this resiliency as a business owner is incredibly important and it’s going to help improve your marketing.
MARKETING LESSON #2: DON’T QUIT TOO EARLY
Once you’ve gotten super clear and specific with your goals, it’s so important to put in the energy and effort consistently, but a lot of small business owners quit too early.
They quit right before things start to shift.
One of the things that happened to me a couple of years ago when I launched You! Branded is that it wasn't working in the beginning. It wasn't selling and I had signed up for a whole program to support me in making this happen.
So I kept making small adjustments and then I kept making small adjustments, and then we started to see a little bit of an increase and I'm like, "Okay, let's keep making some small adjustments."
Then within a year, that product alone brought in six figures to my business because of those small adjustments.
Could you imagine what would have happened if I would have been like, "This doesn't work! Screw this." Which is what a lot of small business owners do.
We often get the first response to something, or don’t see the sales we imagined and we immediately throw in the towel, but this resilience and dedication to making small improvements can result in consistent income in your business.
If you’re constantly setting goals and then throwing in the towel when they don’t work right away you’ll always be creating and not selling.
SMALL IMPROVEMENTS FOR MASSIVE CHANGE
One of my favorite books is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It's helped me so much with my daily habits in both life and business, and what he talks about and what we don't focus enough on is 1% improvement every single day.
The same is true for your marketing.
We're typically looking for something to go from 10% to 90% in 48 hours. There's no proof that shows it’s going to happen. The growth we see is incremental growth, changes that have to happen to lead to the larger leap.
If you are improving even a little bit over time, just 1% daily, that's going to snowball to ultimately be that 90% improvement.
You have to be open to making changes.
You have to be open to making these small adjustments.
You need to set clear goals for yourself.
LESSON #3: DATA DRIVES DECISIONS
Why are the goals you’re setting so important?
The answer to that question is that data drives decisions.
When it comes to marketing, data should be driving your decisions.
The fact that you're like, "Oh, but I really, really love this title. It's so great." But, the data shows that nobody else loves this title or nobody else understands what you're saying. If you’re not willing to change then you’re too emotionally attached to it and not reading the data.
Or, "But, I really love this color." Yeah, but the data shows that that color on a button does not work for you.
Data needs to drive your decisions, especially your marketing decisions and when we're talking about this resiliency and making these small improvements, then you want to make sure that you're looking at the data to know what to adjust.
DATA YOU SHOULD BE PAYING ATTENTION TO
When it comes to data there are obviously numerous things you can measure. However, here are some of the most popular for business owners to monitor and track.
Landing Page Conversion Rate:
How many people land on the page and how many people actually follow through with what you're asking them to do? In this case, an opt-in to your lead magnet and email list.
Typically if you’re promoting something free to a cold audience, you're looking for at least a 30% conversion. We share this information inside of the Academy, by the way. So if you're ever, like, "I don't even know what these conversions should be," we talk about your data and your numbers inside of the Academy a lot.
Email Open Rates:
When we're talking about email open rates, if no one’s opening them, it’s a sure sign that your subject line is underperforming.
It could also be deliverability, but that depends on your email platform. That's why we love ConvertKit.
Typically, it changes based on your list size, but 18% to about 24% is average.
If you have 10,000 people on your email list and you're hitting a solid 22%, great. If you've got 40 people on your email list and you're at 90%, fantastic. As your list grows your conversion will shift as well.
If you're feeling like your email marketing doesn't work, then look at your numbers, starting with your email open rates. If your people aren't opening your emails, it's because your subject line sucks. So, let's focus on increasing that first - remember to make one small change.
Click-Through Email Rates:
If people are reading your emails, but they're not clicking through, then that's your CTA (call to action).
What are you saying in your email? Are you using the right messaging to get people to take action? Sometimes we group everything together and we're like, "It's not working." And, then we don't make these small adjustments that would probably shift everything.
When you start to get into the habit of making those small adjustments frequently and looking at the data, you can make these informed decisions.
It took me about five years to like webinars. I'm in my fifth year of business now. There were periods of time where I was convinced I would never do a webinar again.
It wasn't webinars that sucked. It was that I wasn't great at doing webinars. I needed to fix my game. I needed to get really, really clear on what I was teaching on that webinar. I needed to get better at my CTAs.
I have clients who are like, "Live video doesn't work." And I'm like, "Live video does work, but let's figure out why yours isn't working and let's fix it."
Put your marketing hat on and ask yourself very specific questions to discover what’s not working, rather than generalize the entire thing.
BTW, a good click-through rate for your emails is 1-3% and on a webinar, you’re wanting between a 2-5% conversion rate.
WHAT TO DO IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE DATA
If you don't have a ton of data, try looking at what your audience is responding to.
What kind of posts do people like that you post on social media?
What type of blog topics get the most click-through rates in your email marketing?
What are people asking you about over and over again?
When it comes to marketing we want a clear target and we want to take actions to get us closer to that target. That's how you create marketing that works for your business.
MARKETING LESSON #4: CREATE MARKETING GUIDELINES
One of the things that I implemented a few years ago to help drive my decisions in marketing, were marketing guidelines.
These marketing guidelines for my business specifically helped me step into the CEO role of my company.
I talked about it in this post a few weeks ago.
My marketing guidelines as a CEO are that:
I don't need to post fresh content daily.
I focus on longevity, so I never want something that's going to disappear or that I can't keep and repurpose. That will allow me to create high-value content.
I drive traffic to my home base (aka website)
Those are my three guiding principles when it comes to marketing.
You want to create your own because that's going to allow you to come back to these very specific pieces when things aren't working or when something new comes out and you’re wondering if you should implement it into your strategy.
There’s always something new and you can’t keep up with all of it or you’ll burn out!
These guidelines will help you determine if it is in alignment with how you want to run your business.
The example that I gave a few weeks ago was Clubhouse, which is a great platform and people absolutely love it, but it does not hit my criteria.
It's high value, I will give it that. But it requires you to show up often and the longevity is not there because things disappear. That's just not in alignment with my core guiding principles as a marketer.
So, when it comes to resiliency in marketing, you want to say, what are my principles?
What are the things that are important to me?
What are my values as a marketer?
Make sure that when you're committing to a new marketing strategy and that you're putting in the time and energy to get the data you need. Because marketing is about resiliency and it's about longevity and it's about consistency.
MARKETING LESSON #5: CONSISTENCY IS KEY
This isn't a fluffy word. There's a reason that we talk about consistency in business and why it is so important.
If you're setting a goal to see how blogging works and then you post one blog every month, it’s going to take you a while to know if blogging works for you.
But if you set a goal to see how blogging works in 60 days and you’re diligent and post weekly, then you’ll have the data to look at and make a decision on where you go from there.
Thinking of redoing your entire website because you’re convinced it doesn’t work?
Well, let’s fix what you do have because redoing it is going to take you a long time and maybe some money. Let's instead make some of these tweaks and modifications. Let's see if that helps before you now waste six months of your time writing new copy and redoing your entire website.
Now, of course, there's a time and a place to redo your website, if your brand has changed, if your ideal customer has changed. But we're so quick to not put that marketing hat on and say, "Let me look at this with a lens of data and see, what could I change?"
We’ve recently made changes to our marketing strategy at Brandmerry because of what the data was showing. To hear all the behind-the-scenes of that change be sure to LISTEN to Episode 7 of The Brandmerry Podcast here.
CONCLUSION
Data-driven decisions are so important as a business owner and I really, really hope that you see that.
This message that I wanted to share about resiliency in marketing, it cannot be 100% an emotional decision. You need to follow the data and you need to know what’s working and why!
This is what we teach inside of Brandmerry Academy. You can go to brandmerryacademy.com to check it out.
I hope that this was incredibly helpful for you. I hope this motivated you to start looking at the data to really look at marketing in a way of its longevity.
It isn't a one-hit-wonder strategy. It can't be a one-hit-wonder strategy
We have to keep ourselves on our toes with marketing, it's essential. And so if you struggle with that, if you want more accountability, if you want to know how to look at the data in the right way, we cover that inside of The Academy.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
3 Moves That Made Me A 6-Figure Business Owner
Eager to hit the first 6-figures in your business? I was too back in 2016 and in 2017 and I did it! Today, I'm sharing 3 move that I credit to my first 6-figures and beyond.
3 Moves That Made Me A 6-Figure Business Owner
BY MICHELLE KNIGHT
I know why you're here. You saw that title, six figures, and my guess is that you are really close to it or you have a goal to reach in a short amount of time.
I'm so excited and honored to talk to you about the three moves, and ultimately shifts, that led me to create a six-figure business within one year of signing my first client.
First, I want to make one thing clear: you are not going to learn about some strategy that's going to turn you into a six-figure business owner overnight. I am not about that 10K-in-10-days life for new entrepreneurs who need to do the work.
The things that I'm going to teach you today are going to require energy on your part and they're going to require some work. But guess what? If you want to create a sustainable and scalable business as an online entrepreneur, you've got to be in it for the long haul.
I know so many entrepreneurs are right there at the cusp of it. Or you're sitting there at your desk and you've got a post-it in front of you that says SIX-FIGURE BUSINESS, in all caps!
I'm not saying that six-figures is the end all be all. I want you to, and I hope that you want to, continue to scale your business past six figures, but this, for many of us, is the very first hurdle.
I know that was true for me.
MY JOURNEY TO SIX-FIGURES
I started my business in 2016 after the birth of my son. I was working a nine-to-five at the time and I got this crazy idea that I wanted to start my own business.
I'm not an entrepreneur by trade, I don't come from a family of entrepreneurs, so this kind of came out of left field.
As I began to expand and grow my business and invest in different things, I learned very, very quickly that there were three major shifts that needed to happen in order for me to actually sign clients and create revenue.
I went eight months without signing clients in my business, but after I signed that first client and these shifts started rolling out, I hit six figures in just one year.
It is my goal to support you in getting to that milestone and then continuing to use these shifts that are going to serve you for years and years to come.
1. MASTER MY MINDSET
The first move that I made in my business was to get in true alignment with my goal.
No one told me that being an entrepreneur was a fast track in personal development work. But you quickly realize that as the CEO, in the beginning as pretty much the only person on your team and a one-person show, that you've really got to have your head in the game.
If your head's not in the game, the strategies won't work. All the things that you're doing just won't work.
That's one of our beliefs over here at Brandmerry, that you have got to have strategy and mindset in order for both of them to complement one another.
But I didn't know that in the beginning and since strategy comes very, very easy to me, it took me a little bit longer to get my mindset to match.
There were two specific areas that I had to focus on when it came to mindset.
Number one was my money mindset, and number two was my mindset or my belief around perfectionism.
MONEY MINDSET
Now, when it came to my money mindset, there were two pieces that I needed to focus on. One was looking at the past beliefs and stories and chapters that I had gone through that were contributing to my current beliefs around money.
This belief was that people who made money were bad people.
There was a lot of work that I had to do to ultimately redefine what success and having money meant to me. I quickly realized that by having more money, I could ultimately contribute more.
I could hire a team and support a team, I could support my family, I could have more of an impact in the world. It's taken a few years for me to really get to this place of feeling really confident in saying that to you.
In order to get here, one of the first things that I had to do was go back and journal on my beliefs. I specifically asked myself three questions.
What are the beliefs that I'm carrying around money?
What was I taught as a child?
What did my teachers say to me about money?
I grew up in the nonprofit sector. I worked in the nonprofit sector for a very long time, and the work we did was amazing, but ultimately the pay was not. I was carrying some of those beliefs with me as I began to grow my business.
One of the beautiful things about being an entrepreneur, but also one of the hardest, is that there's no ceiling. We can ultimately make as much money as we want because we are fully in control of bringing that money in with the right marketing strategies and mindset.
I really had to shift into that place so that I could have more of that expansive energy. In an episode I did on my lifestyle podcast, The Beautiful Climb, I go more in depth with my money story and some of the specific things that I did to help me shift. Listen to the episode here.
PERFECTIONISM
The second thing that I needed to do was release the beliefs that I had around perfectionism.
I grew up as a die-hard perfectionist and I am still in the process of recovering from this. Thank you, Brene Brown, for all of your amazing work. I don't know if I would be here without you.
I loved Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, but any book by Brene Brown is truly incredible if you struggle with perfectionism. I also talked about perfectionism in this video and how detrimental it can be to entrepreneurs.
When I was starting out, I would wait to post a video, I would wait to send emails, I would sit and edit my website over and over and over and over again.
But as an entrepreneur, you have to be visible.
If I wasn't showing up, I wasn't bringing in community members and I wasn't making any money.
This is why it took me eight months to sign a client. I had to really start working on this idea of perfectionism and start peeling back the layers.
The number one thing that I did was just hit the button.
I remember that first email, after days of agonizing over the process, I was like, "Oh my gosh, they don't even care. I'm just going to hit the button." I hit it and I was like, "Oh, okay. This is fine. If I just keep doing that over and over again, eventually it will become super easy," and that's where I am today.
There was a lot of internal work that I had to do in order to make money in my business, and those were two of the main areas that I had to begin with and really dive into.
ACTION STEP: Think about your relationship with money and the negative feelings you are carrying around.
2. BUILD A SOLID FOUNDATION
The second move that I needed to accomplish before I could hit six figures was building a solid brand foundation.
Because of this experience and my success, I now have an entire course called You! Branded. I also teach this inside of my free class, Build a Better Brand Method.
But when I started, I skipped the entire process. That's why I'm so passionate about it.
I watch entrepreneurs skip their brand all of the time.
I thought that if I could just glaze over it, that I would know who my ideal customer was and I would understand what a brand really meant and I would have clear messaging.
It turns out that by skipping over it or even skimming it just a bit, you don't build a solid foundation and there’s nowhere to scale.
When you're thinking of building your business, I want you to think about building an actual building. You're setting a strong foundation at the base, that's your brand. Then as you continue to scale, add offers, new marketing strategies, all of that stuff, you're supported because you've taken the time and the energy to build a solid foundation.
I skipped this crucial piece and so for eight months I didn't make any money, but as soon as I got into the nitty-gritty, as soon as I really solidified and got specific with my niche, I understood my story and my brand story and how that played a role, I got super clear on who I was speaking to, I understood how to create consistent messaging, and I tapped into my emotional branding, that is when my existing community started to respond.
Those first clients that I signed weren't new to me, they'd been around for months, but suddenly I was speaking so clearly and connecting with them on such a deep level that they were ready to invest.
I created a video for you right here on emotional branding that I definitely want you to check out.
It's going to be really beneficial for you in your journey.
ACTION STEP: If you don't know what a solid brand foundation looks like, I do have a free class for you, it's called the Build a Better Brand Method. You can sign up for that at betterbrandmethod.com.
3. BUILD OUT SYSTEMS
The final move that I made, when it came to building a six-figure business, was getting my systems in place.
I'm kind of nuts about this now, it's one of the things that I teach inside of Brandmerry Academy because I recognized very, very quickly how much time I got back by having my systems in place.
Sometimes we postpone putting our systems in place, I'm talking about your content creation system, your client onboarding system, your SOPs for behind the scenes on how you launch a new podcast or launch a new product, for example.
We wait to do that because it does take some time commitment and a little bit of work, but the long haul and how much time you actually save yourself months and months down the line is incredible.
One of the systems that I put in place really early on in my business was my content creation workflow. I've really embraced the art of repurposing.
I started mastering my weekly workflow early on because, as I mentioned, I was working a nine-to-five, I had a new baby, and then I was also trying to scale this business.
I understood that I needed to just show up and get visible and create content so that people could find me, but I only had this much time, so I wanted to make the most out of that time.
I put together this repurposing workflow, this system for my business, and I've continued to use it and scale it even today. This video that I'm recording is one of three that I'm recording in a one-hour time increment because I'm bulk scheduling, which is part of my process.
Five years later, I'm still using the same content workflow system as when I first started.
When I first started implementing these systems in my business, not only did I find myself working more efficiently, but I had way more time to do the things that I love to do.
ACTION STEP: Download my Repurposing Guide to learn how to create your weekly content workflow and set up one of your most important systems.
CONCLUSION
One of the things I don't think is talked about a lot is as you're growing your business, especially to the six-figure mark, is that it's going to take a lot of time and energy.
Anywhere where you can free up pockets of time, you can actually have fun and enjoy the journey, is going to mean so much to you.
So when you look back, you don't want to say, “Oh my gosh, I never slept, I never ate, it was horrible."
You want to look back and say, "Dang, I did that and I'm really, really proud of what I did because I also had the capacity to enjoy life," which is always the goal, right?
Why have a successful business, if you can't also enjoy the rewards, reap the rewards and enjoy the life that comes with that?
Those are the three moves that I had to make in my business to hit 6-figures and I continue to use them today as I move to new income goals and growth.
Make sure that you watch the Build a Better Brand Method masterclass. It is so important, no matter where you're at in your business, that you make sure that all of those little spots are filled in because it will have an impact on your scalability moving forward.
Remember, it's not just about hitting the first six figures, it's about continuing to do that over and over again and scaling to the million-dollar mark and it starts with your brand.
- FREE GIFTS YOU'LL LOVE -
DISCOVER YOUR BRAND STORY IN UNDER 5 MINUTES
LEARN HOW TO WRITE AN ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE THAT CONVERTS
MAP OUT 30 DAYS OF CONTENT IN UNDER AN HOUR
- READ THE LATEST POSTS -
MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.
How to Write An About Me Page
Ever wonder how you should write your 'About Me' page?
This includes the 'About Me' section on your website, blog and social media channels.
Today on the blog, I'm sharing a template for how to write your 'About Me' page.
Today, on The Authentic Brand Builders Podcast (choose to listen below or continue reading the blog version), we're talking about your 'About Me' page. My goal is that you have everything you need to craft an ‘About Me’ page that is going to work FOR your brand, not against it!
One of the key beliefs we have over here at Brandmerry is that your website is important and should work FOR you. It's not enough to just get views. You want your website to actually convert into revenue.
There are a few things that we know about websites.
Number one, we know that the homepage is typically the most visited page, especially if you're utilizing SEO strategies, search engine optimization, which is one of our trainings inside of Brandmerry Academy.
Number two, the second most visited page is your 'About Me' page. That tells us a lot of juicy information about your 'About Me' page, including that people care about the story and the person behind the brand.
If you've ever asked yourself, "Well, I don't think people care. Do people care? Do people care why I created this? Or do people care what has led me to this moment in my life and why I launched my business?"
The answer is, "Absolutely they do.”
It also tells us what we should include on our 'About Me' page.
A lot of other branding and marketing experts will tell you that your 'About Me' page should be 100% about your ideal customer. I do not believe that is true. I have not believed that from the beginning. And I stand by that five years later.
So, today we’re diving into your ‘About Me’ page so you feel confident crafting yours. This is a continuation of episodes and blogs where we’re giving you fundamental pieces for building your brand.
We have talked about your brand’s mission.
We have outlined the difference between branding and marketing and where you should start.
We have talked about your brand values.
We've talked about jumping ship in your marketing, and today we're going to talk about your 'About Me' page because it is incredibly important.
YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE IS ABOUT YOU
Let’s just set the record straight that your 'About Me' page should be about you!
It should be about the person behind the brand or the people behind the brand.
If I'm a consumer and I'm on a website and it says, 'About Me' at the top and I click on that, and then the whole entire page tells me nothing about the person behind the brand, why they started their business, why they choose their products, anything like that, I’m incredibly turned off.
I didn't click through to learn more about myself.
I clicked through to learn more about you.
It's helping me in my decision-making process.
Over on the Brandmerry blog, we have a blog post on the consumer buying process and the different stages customers go through before making a purchase decision.
When someone is at the evaluation stage, where they are looking at the different solutions to their problem, that's when we find that people love to visit the 'About Me' page of a brand because they want to know who the person is, the mission, and the values behind a brand. That information can help them with their decision-making process.
So your 'About Me' page is incredibly important. It is often what I recommend to be the second page that you create on your website, as it's the second most viewed.
YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE FOR CONSUMERS
You also want to think about writing your ‘About Me’ page for a consumer.
Think about if you're buying a skincare product and you're at a place where you're looking at two or three different brands, and you go to an 'About Me' page, what do you want to see?
What do you want to read?
Last year, we were buying a new mattress. I was going between a few different companies. I had narrowed it down, and I was looking at the story behind each one, and that's how I ended up choosing the bed that we went with, because I loved their story, and I love their mission, and I love the way that they shared that. That pulled me in, and it made my decision for me.
The decision was because of their story, and I even went with the most expensive option!
3 TIPS FOR WRITING AN 'ABOUT ME' PAGE
TELL A STORY
As we talked about in the brand storytelling episode, don't miss the opportunity to tell a story.
Storytelling is incredibly powerful and incredibly important. It's going to build that connection, that trust with your audience.
I've signed clients because of my 'About Me' page.
I have had people reach out to me and submit an application for 1:1 consulting. We’ll have a conversation via email, and I’ll answer questions to support them in their decision. Then I'll get an email from them 24 hours later that says, "All right, I'm ready to go. I just read your 'About Me' page, sign me up."
Your ‘About Me’ page can be one of your most powerful assets. And you're going to get the most out of those pages if you are actually telling a story.
Keep reading for my top tips for writing yours.
INCLUDE PERSONAL PHOTOS
I love brand photography. It's one of my favorite ways to enhance the branding experience, and I encourage my clients to have a professional photo shoot for their brand because photos are incredibly powerful, and we know this.
Photos are also linked to improving brand affinity, which is a deeper level of connection, typically through mission, values, and trust that a consumer has for a brand.
Photos are a great way to build that brand affinity because, through photography, you can share different moments and experiences in your life that allow your audience to say, "Oh my gosh, I know them." Instagram's a great example of this in action.
Utilizing photos to showcase whatever story you're telling.
So showcasing these different photos is a great way to build that connection.
For your 'About Me' page, I recommend not loading it with a bunch of professional photos, but putting in more lifestyle-type photos. Showcase photos of you at different places, in different outfits with different facial expressions, maybe you with your children, with your dog, on a trip, or with a glass of wine.
We follow people and we're like, "Oh, I know them," or "They did this," or "This is so-and-so's favorite wine," or "Did you know, so-and-so's dog?" and we feel like we know them!
Focus on showcasing what you're saying on the page, through your storytelling in the photos; not just typing out your story, but showing your story visually through photography.
HAVE A CALL TO ACTION
When it comes to brand storytelling to move someone through to purchasing a product, we can't just tell stories to tell stories. We have to have a call to action.
On an 'About Me' page, I love to have two CTA’s.
The first CTA is a click-through to your product or your service. If your ideal customer has read all the way to the bottom, they're probably pretty committed. And if they're further along in the buying process, say stage three or four, they're ready to make a purchase decision, and having that button there can be incredibly powerful.
In addition to that, and below that, I love to share a lead magnet. The second CTA should be your free gift/ lead magnet to capture their attention.
Again, if someone has read your full ‘About Me’ page, they're committed, but maybe they're not at a place where they're ready to invest. So having a way for them to opt in to your email list through a lead magnet can be incredibly powerful for capturing their information and being able to stay in contact with them.
So those are three must-haves for your 'About Me' page.
Your story, having photos that show different moments in time, not just professional photos, and a call to action. Typically, a link to go purchase your product, your service, or your product suite page, and your lead magnet opt-in.
HOW TO WRITE YOUR 'ABOUT ME’ PAGE
Now I'm going to share with you my insider, super complicated, never-before-released method for writing your 'About Me' page!
Brace yourself because it's easy. We overthink things all of the time when it comes to writing our copy, and one of the reasons that I encourage my clients to write their 'About Me' page, in the beginning, is because it's great practice in writing your story and pulling in pieces, like your mission and your values.
STEP ONE: IDENTIFY 3 TRANSITIONS
To begin, think about three transitions that have happened in your life. These can be three moments that are close together in your timeline or they can be spread out over the years. The timing does not matter, but I want you to think about these three transitions as a launching-off point.
Identifying these moments can include:
A moment where something changed in your life.
Something happened to you, and you had to change course or direction.
You made a decision and you changed course.
You learned a valuable lesson, and you decided to do something different.
Think about these pivots or transitions. No more than three for our purposes here.
Write each of these out!
STEP TWO: PIECE IT TOGETHER
From there, I want you to write out each of those different things and then piece them together, and you have an 'About Me' page!
There's one last part of the process, but I want to share my three with you first as an example of steps one and two.
My first transition was when I decided not to go to college right after high school. I was the Salutatorian of my class. I had gotten an incredible scholarship to Loyola University, and I decided that I didn't want to do that. I had a long history with perfectionism and was just at a place in my life where I was not happy and was ready to take bold action and do something that felt good for me. It was the first time in my life that I had made a decision that went against what everyone around me wanted for me. And it was a big deal.
In this first transition, I'm setting the tone. I'm saying, "Oh, this is who I was, and then this happened in 2005." The more dates that you can use, the better. Those are incredibly helpful for markers and a great way to keep your audience engaged.
Next, I talk about how I wanted to be in musical theater. To be a star on Broadway, I was going to school for that in 2008 when my brother was diagnosed with cancer. I go on to talk about going through that experience. I don't go into every detail about that event. It's not necessary. It's sacred to me. I don't need to share it with everyone, but that was an important part of my life and did impact the business that I have today. So I share that piece of the puzzle.
Then I talk about after losing my brother, marrying my husband, and finally present the third transition, which was the birth of my son. This transition is where I focus the majority of my energy because that is what ultimately led to my business.
The birth of my son got me thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, what I wanted to create, and how I wanted to be home with him, and that ultimately led to the creation of Brandmerry.
You can head here to read my full ‘About Me’ page, in fact, I encourage you to do that! It’s recently been updated, so it’s fun to see the new updates and transitions.
It's a great case study.
What I want you to focus on is that I've led the reader through three transitions. I've also recognized how my audience can connect with those pieces and highlight those elements throughout.
Some of those elements are:
Perfectionism. So many people in my audience and my ideal customers are recovering perfectionists or perfectionists, or they are starting their business or doing something that's different from what they originally were doing. So by sharing that first transition, there's that connection piece.
Grief and Loss. We've all experienced grief and loss. Maybe it wasn't your sibling, it was someone else or something, but we can all relate to that feeling. And that is something that connects us and many of my clients and my customers who have had these moments that have triggered the mission that they have, or have triggered them to do the work that they do in the world.
Starting My Business. My community is also made up of people who want to start businesses or have businesses. So we all have that moment where we're like, "I'm going to do this dang thing," and that's why I share mine.
Choose your moments very strategically based on the connection with your audience.
And then finally, what you want to do is lead to where it is now.
We always talk about a beginning, middle, and end to storytelling. But with an 'About Me' page, it's like a beginning, middle, and here we are now, continuing into the future.
STEP THREE: SET UP THE BUSINESS
Don’t think about an end to your ‘About Me’ page, but rather the next steps!
This is where you want to share your mission statement, talk about the work that you do, and lead to that work-with-me page.
It’s also where I recommend including your Hook, i.e., who you are, who you serve, their struggle, and their desires.
If you sell a product, you can talk about when you recognized there was a need for your product. Maybe you went through a period where you talked about where you tested a bunch of stuff and it didn't work, and you felt defeated, and then you finally got the prototype that worked, and you put it out into the world. And here's where you are now.
If you have a t-shirt clothing line that uses organic cotton, why did you decide to do that?
There are so many different things that you can do. Don't limit yourself to the product and service that you sell. Focus on telling that story about the person or the people behind the brand because that's what the 'About Me' page is ultimately intended for.
Inside my program, Magnetic Brand Story, we take a deeper dive into what we call the heroine's journey, which goes into more detail on crafting your story, showcasing multiple peaks and dips in your story, and how to craft it!
However, for years and years, the three transitions were all I taught and used, and still to this day. It’s also available inside Magnetic Brand Story.
LENGTH OF YOUR ‘ABOUT ME’ PAGE
Here's the last thing that I'll share with you before you go forth and write your 'About Me' pages.
Don't stress about how long it is when you're writing it.
Just write it.
Either write it in a Google Doc or record it and transcribe it if you find that you filter yourself. Whichever strategy works for you, write it and then clean it up. Don’t filter yourself to start, or you’ll miss out on crucial elements of your story!
We limit ourselves in our storytelling abilities by trying to create the finished product when we first write it. And it never works that way.
People don't write their finished book when they first write their book. It goes through tons and tons of rounds of edits. And I'm not saying you're writing a book and we don't need to spend months and months on your 'About Me' page, but just write it, tell the story, focus on the connection, then go out and make sure you've touched on these pieces I shared in this post.
CONCLUSION
I hope that you now understand how important your website is and how powerful your ‘About Me’ page truly is. And that your 'About Me' page is meant to tell the story behind the brand, not to say, "Oh, and I'll help you do X, Y, and Z," and that's the only thing on that page. Please don't do that.
Utilize the steps outlined in this blog post today and share your new ‘About Me’ page with me on Instagram @michelleknightco so I can celebrate with you.
If you want to take a deeper dive into writing your Brand Story, then check out The Magnetic Brand Method here.
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MEET MICHELLE
Hey there, I'm Michelle Knight and I an online branding and marketing consultant for female entrepreneurs.
I believe in the power of storytelling and using that superpower to brand and market yourself online...oh and to set yourself free.
I'm obsessed with living a life of freedom, so much so, that my family and I now travel full-time while running my business from the road.
This blog serves as a home base for all things branding, marketing, content creation and more.